First, Trump got most mainstream media news outlets to refocus on the Clinton email controversy with front-page vigor. The controversy never got that much attention when it was being investigated in Congress. Now, it is on the cover of every newspaper for the world to read.

Second, Trump’s comments stole the headlines from the Democrats’ vice presidential rollout and President Obama’s speech on day three of the convention. No one is talking about Tim Kaine, certainly, and Barack Obama’s oversized ego must be smarting from the lack of attention. Everyone is talking about Trump.

Third, he took another dig at the mainstream media, and they are printing his criticism everywhere. Re-quoting the brilliant line, “…I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press,” was sarcasm at its finest. Everyone knows that the press will never print anything negative about a Democrat unless forced to do so, or unless they’re trying to raise a friendly warning flag about changing course. Consequently, they will definitely not be “rewarded.” Republicans and conservative-leaning Independents should be laughing at this line.

Fourth, Trump reinforced the rigged system narrative. All week long, Bernie Sanders supporters and the DNC have been arguing over the obviously rigged system that favored Hillary Clinton. Now Trump has expounded upon that narrative. He knows you cannot steal deleted emails. After all, how could the Russians hack that to which FBI Director James Comey testified was destroyed beyond any possible recovery? Unless, of course, the FBI was lying…

Trump watered the mental seed that is growing in everyone who believes the system is rigged. If those emails do not exist, why worry about hacking? If they do exist, why did the FBI not produce them?

Fifth, Trump reopened a festering wound in the psyche of the Democratic voter: what if those emails do contain something that can sink Hillary in November? No doubt, a significant portion of the “outrage” over Trump’s alleged hacking comments was really just preemptive damage control. If Hillary Clinton did something so egregious that one of those emails contained more than yoga schedules, then the DNC will have a hard time distracting the American public from that news story. The only thing that might work is faux indignation over the possibility that a foreign government is intervening in our affairs.

The sixth and most brilliant Trump achievement was how hard the media bit. The accusations levied against Trump were over-the-top. From Russian collusion to treason, the words he actually said reached none of the hype the media reported them to be. Now, normal people who do not live in New York City, Washington, D.C. or Los Angeles are reading those words and thinking “wow, that comment is meaningless… hardly treasonous… the media really has it in for this guy.”